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  • A Draft Essay on Russian and Western Postmodernism*
  • Mikhail Epstein

I suggest to your attention some excerpts from my paper on two Russian postmodernisms and their interrelationship with the Western one. The paper was presented at the MLA conference in December 1991, at the same panel with Marjorie Perloff’s and Barrett Watten’s papers now proposed for this discussion. Also, I will cite several passages from my recent pamphlet (of a very limited circulation) arguing for the purely “ideological,” “Eastern” version of postmodernism as opposed to Fredric Jameson’s influential theory which connects postmodernism with the economic basis of the “late capitalism” and therefore denies its possibility in non-Western countries (Mikhail Epstein, Relativistic Patterns in Totalitarian Thinking: An Inquiry into Soviet Ideological Language. Kennan Institute of Advanced Russian Studies. Occasional Papers, # 243. Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1991). What I am going to say does not reflect latest interesting developments in Russian criticism where the question of “post-modernism” became as focal as the concept of “socialist realism” was in the 1930s (this is not an arbitrary connexion: actually, the later stage of post-modernism comes to succeed the earlier one). In particular, I would like to address you to the articles of Vyacheslav Kuritsyn “Post-modernism: new ancient culture” and Sergei Nosov “Literature and Play,” accompanied by editorial comments in Novyi Mir (Moscow), 1992, No.2. pp.225–239.

First of all, I want to discuss “the origins and the meaning of Russian postmodernism,” taking the idiom from the famous work of Nikolai Berdiaev The Origins and the Meaning of Russian Communism (Istoki i smysl russkogo kommunizma, Paris, 1955). Communist teachings came to Russia from Western Europe and seemed at first completely alien to this backward semi-Asiatic country; however Russia turned out to be the first nation to attempt to enact these teachings on a world-wide scale. Berdiaev has shown convincingly that communism was intimately linked to the entire spirit of Russian history long before Russia learned anything about Marxism.

The same paradox, in my view, relates to the problem of Russian postmodernism. A phenomenon which seemed to be purely Western, in the final analysis exposes its lasting affinity with some principal aspects of Russian national tradition.

Among the different definitions of postmodernism, I would single out as the most important the production of reality as a series of plausible copies, or what the French philosopher Baudrillard calls “simulation.” Other features of postmodernism such as the waning of comprehensive theoretical metanarratives or the abolishment of the oppositions between high and low, elitist and mass culture, seem derivative of this phenomenon of hyperreality. Models of reality replace reality itself which therefore becomes irrecoverable.

Indeed, the previous dominant trends in Western twentieth century culture such as avant-gardism and modernism were elitist in that they pitted themselves against the reality of mass society either because of an alienation from it (modernism) or because of an effort to transform it in a revolutionary way (avant-gardism). As for metanarratives such as Marxism and Freudianism, their main point was to unmask the illusions of consciousness (ideological perversions) in order to disclose the genuine reality of material production or libidinal energy.

Yet once the concept of reality ceases to operate, these metanarratives, which appealed to reality, and elitist arts, which opposed it, begin to wane.

The appeal to a reality principle evokes the phenomena of great Western science, philosophy, and technology and thus may be considered the cornerstone of all Western civilization. According to this principle, reality must be distinguished from all products of human imagination and there are practical means which permit the establishment of truth as a form of correspondence between cultural concepts and reality. Science, technology, and even the arts strove to break through different subjective illusions and mythological prejudices to the substance of reality by way of objective cognition, practical utilization, and realistic imitation respectively. The last great metanarratives of Western civilization, those of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, are still penetrated by this obsession with capturing reality and they relentlessly attempt to demystify all illusory products of culture and ideology.

During the twentieth century, however, an unexpected twist transformed these highly realistic and even...

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